War!

A bored expat writes: T. E. Lawrence (later – “of Arabia”), stationed as an intelligence officer in Cairo, writes home to his family:

“There is of course, nothing happening here, or likely to happen. Reports, and ciphering and drawing maps all day. The Dardanelles show will end soon:- Syria is quite quiet, though the Armenian villages in the North have been broken up, and the people scattered to various districts. No massacres, however, as yet. I can’t think of anything else to say:- The hot weather, as Father is interested in it, will end at the end of September. It’s not very hot now – and besides I am never more than about 5 minutes in the open air.”

BORN TODAY: in Purwokerto on the Island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia ) – her mother a descendent of the Maharaja of Java, of Hindu, Polish, German and French extraction, her father a Danish engineer – Nini Arlette Thielade, ballet dancer.

War!

Arms makers: in the US, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation issues its shipping note for “1,248 cases of three-inch calibre shrapnel shells, filled”, due to be carried across the Atlantic (from neutral USA) in the cargo hold of the passenger liner “Lusitania” to the (British) Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. The weapons do not appear in the ship’s final manifest.

Peace makers: The International Congress of Women convenes at The Hague, Netherlands, with more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries—including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States—all dedicated to the cause of peace and a resolution of the war. “With mourning hearts we stand united here….We grieve for many brave young men who have lost their lives on the battlefield before attaining their full manhood; we mourn with the poor mothers bereft of their sons; with the thousands of young widows and fatherless children, and we feel that we can no longer endure in this twentieth century of civilization that government should tolerate brute force as the only solution of international disputes”.

News makers: The New York Times reports a recent explanation in Russia’s Duma [Parliament} explaining the presence of Russian troops in Persia:

“The presence of our troops in Persian territory by no means involves a violation of Persian neutrality. Our detachments were sent to that country some years ago for the definite purpose of establishing and maintaining order in districts contiguous to our possessions, of high economic importance to us, also to prevent the seizure of some of these districts by the Turks, who openly strove to create for themselves there, especially in the district of Urumiah, a convenient base for military operations against the Caucasus. The Persian Government, not having the actual power to maintain its neutrality, met the Turkish violation of the latter with protests, which, however, had no results.”

DIED TODAY: In prison in the Netherlands – Serial killer Maria Swanenburg, aged 75, convicted in 1885 of poisoning over 100 people with arsenic between 1880 and 1883, of whom at least 27 died, after starting with her own mother (1880) and shortly after her own father. Her motive – insurance policies. Her punishment – life imprisonment.

~ at Moama, New South Wales, Alexander Noel Constantine, survivor of the Battle of Britain, shot down and killed in Indonesia in 1947 by Dutch counter-insurgent P-40 Kittyhawks while he was flying an Indian transport plane (C-47 Dakota) carrying medicines donated by the Malayan Red Cross.

War!

War at Sea: A British submarine (B11) penetrates the Dardanelle Straits and destroys the Turkish (British built) Battleship “Mesudiye”, killing 37, before escaping back into the open waters of the Northern Aegean [Burg & Purcell].